Digital Identity Non-Human Identity, Machine Identity & Agentic Identity Associate Director (Houston)

JOB REQUISITIONDigital Identity Non-Human Identity, Machine Identity & Agentic Identity Associate DirectorLOCATIONCHICAGOADDITIONAL LOCATION(S)ATLANTA - PEACHTREE RD, AUSTIN, CHARLOTTE, DALLAS, HOUSTON, MIAMI, ORLANDO, PHILADELPHIA, TAMPAJOB DESCRIPTIONYou Belong Here The Protiviti Career provides opportunity to learn, inspire, and advance within a collaborative and inclusive culture.  We hire curious individuals for whom learning is a passion. We lean into our mission: We Care. We Collaborate. We Deliver. At every level, we champion leaders who live our values of integrity, inclusion, innovation, and commitment to success. Imagining our work as a journey, we believe integrity guides our way, inclusion moves us forward together, innovation creates new destinations, and our commitment to success empowers us to deliver on our vision to be the most trusted global consulting firm. Where We Need You Protiviti is looking for a Technology Consulting Associate Director to join our growing Digital Identity team with a specialization in Non-Human Identity (NHI), Machine Identity, Workload Identity, and Emerging Agentic Identity.  This leader will help clients address one of the fastest-growing challenges in cybersecurity: securing and governing identities used by applications, services, cloud workloads, APIs, automation platforms, DevOps pipelines, machines, bots, and AI agents. The ideal candidate combines executive-level client advisory skills, strong business development and market-facing capabilities, architect-level technical expertise, experience leading complex cybersecurity and identity programs, and passion for shaping emerging identity capabilities within the AI era.  This individual will play a key role in expanding Protiviti's market presence, developing new service offerings, mentoring practitioners, supporting strategic pursuits, and leading transformative identity initiatives across Fortune 500 organizations.  What You Can Expect As an Associate Director, you'll take a lead role in strengthening our relationships with clients and providing seamless guidance in the completion of engagements. You'll partner with our strategic clients to manage risk associated with their use of technology.  You'll develop strategies to solve complex business problems using new ways of thinking, and devise solutions to support your clients' needs through analytics, automation or the latest tools and methods.  Partner with clients and alliance partners to identify opportunities and develop technology-enabled solutions focused on identity security.  Serve as a trusted advisor to CISOs, IAM leaders, cloud security leaders, enterprise architects, and platform engineering teams.  Lead client engagements spanning strategy, assessments, architecture design, implementation oversight, operating model design, governance, and roadmap development.  Develop lasting client relationships and expand Protiviti's presence in the market.  Help define Protiviti's point of view related to Non-Human Identity, Machine Identity, Agentic Identity, and Identity Security for AI.  Support proposal development, business development activities, alliance relationships, and thought leadership initiatives. Mentor and develop consulting teams while overseeing the successful execution of project work plans.  Collaborate across Protiviti practices including Cybersecurity, Cloud Security, AI Security, Data Security, Infrastructure, and Application Security.  What Will Help You Be Successful Helping organizations secure identities beyond traditional workforce users.  Advising executive stakeholders on emerging risks associated with machine identities, cloud-native identities, automation, and AI agents. Translating complex identity architecture concepts into practical business outcomes and measurable risk reduction.  Solving challenges that span IAM, PAM, IGA, cloud security, application security, and DevSecOps domains.  Building trusted relationships with clients and alliance partners.  Developing market-leading service offerings and go-to-market strategies.  Leading technical and business discussions across diverse stakeholder groups.  Building and mentoring high-performing consulting teams. Contributing to proposals, sales pursuits, and thought leadership initiatives.  Staying at the forefront of evolving identity trends, platforms, and security challenges.  Do Your Talents Include the Following? Identity Strategy and Advisory  Experience delivering strategic IAM, PAM, NHI, or Machine Identity advisory services, including assessments, maturity evaluations, strategy development, and roadmap creation.  Experience designing enterprise operating models and governance frameworks for identity programs.  Ability to communicate technical and business risks to executive stakeholders and boards.  Experience developing identity security standards, policies, and control frameworks.  Non-Human Identity and Machine Identity  Hands-on experience securing and governing non-human identities including service accounts, application accounts, service principals, API keys, workload identities, container identities, automation accounts, bot identities, and AI-powered agents.  Experience addressing credential sprawl, secrets management, token lifecycle management, certificate lifecycle management, privileged service account governance, identity ownership and accountability, least privilege implementation, and identity discovery and inventory.  Experience designing lifecycle processes for creation, ownership, approval, monitoring, certification, review, and retirement of machine identities.  Hands-on experience in architecting and implementing NHI/Secrets management solutions aligning with leading NHI frameworks such as OWASP.  Architecture and Technical Leadership  Architect-level understanding of IAM capabilities including IGA, PAM, Access Management, authentication and authorization, and Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR).  Experience designing secure identity architectures leveraging OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, JWTs, service-to-service authentication, and federated workload identity.  Experience designing or evaluating secrets management solutions, certificate lifecycle management solutions, key management architectures, cloud-native identity platforms, API authorization patterns, and Zero Trust architectures.  Cloud and Platform Security  Experience with one or more of the following: Microsoft Entra ID, Azure Managed Identities, AWS IAM, Google Cloud IAM, Kubernetes, container platforms, CI/CD platforms, Infrastructure-as-Code environments, and cloud-native workload identity solutions.  Emerging Agentic Identity and AI Security  While direct experience with Agentic Identity is not required, successful candidates will demonstrate experience applicable to AI-enabled identity use cases, including identity governance for autonomous systems, delegated authorization models, service-to-service authentication, automation and orchestration platforms, AI-enabled applications and workflows, human accountability models for non-human actors, secure access patterns for AI systems, and governance and lifecycle management of AI agents and autonomous workloads.  Business Development and Market Leadership  Identifying client challenges and converting them into consulting opportunities.  Developing executive presentations, proposals, points of view, and solution offerings.  Building relationships with alliance partners and technology vendors.  Contributing to sales pursuits and revenue growth.  Speaking at industry events, webinars, client workshops, and executive briefings.  Supporting practice development and market expansion initiatives.  Leadership Experience  Leading cross-functional consulting teams.Coaching and mentoring professionals.  Conducting performance feedback and career development discussions.  Managing multiple complex engagements simultaneously.  Operating effectively in a fast-paced, matrixed consulting environment.  Experience With the Following Technologies is Preferred CyberArk (Conjur), SailPoint, Saviynt, Veza, Delinea, Okta, Ping Identity, Microsoft Entra, Venafi, HashiCorp Vault, AWS IAM, Kubernetes, BeyondTrust, Akeyless, Oasis Security, Token, Clutch, and other NHI, PAM, and Identity Security platforms.  Your Educational and Professional Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline (e.g., Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, Cybersecurity) 9+ years working in IAM, PAM, cybersecurity consulting, cloud security, or related fields.  Experience within a consulting firm, systems integrator, software vendor, or large enterprise identity program is strongly preferred.  Professional certifications are strongly preferred, including CISSP, CCSP, Microsoft security certifications, CyberArk certifications, SailPoint certifications, Saviynt certifications, AWS certifications, and vendor-specific IAM or PAM credentials.  Experience building or leading a Machine Identity or Non-Human Identity program.  Experience with service account governance initiatives.  Experience with certificate lifecycle management programs.  Experience implementing workload identity federation.  Experience securing AI-enabled applications or autonomous systems.  Experience developing NHI security offerings, thought leadership, or market strategies.  Existing relationships with IAM, PAM, Cloud Security, DevOps, or AI Security leaders.  Our Hybrid Workplace Protiviti practices a hybrid model, which is a combination of working in person with a purpose and working remotely. This model creates meaningful experiences for our people and our clients while offering a flexible environment. The ratio of remote to in-person requirements vary by client, project, team, and other business factors. Our people work both in-person in local Protiviti offices and on client sites, which can include local or out-of-state travel based on